Software Product Compatibility Reports is an innovative new tool designed to allow customers to easily generate custom reports about compatible IBM software combinations, product end-of-service dates and product translations. Using this tool, customers may create reports about a product's compatibility with operating systems, prerequisite software or virtualization environments. Customers may also use the tool to create tailor-make graphical reports about a set of product's end of service dates. Lastly, using the Software Product Compatibility Reports tool a customer can create reports about the translations available for a product or all the products that have been translated into a specific language.The tool is now available for use here http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/prodguid/v1r0/clarity/index.html

There have been a few other blog posts written about Docker on Power (see references at the end of this article) so while this is not the first article written about this topic, this is my account of leveraging the IBM Power Development Cloud (PDP) to test and gain familiarity with this container technology on IBM Power Systems....for free.

The Virtual Server Request

The PDP currently provides Virtual Server access for Power Systems. This is not a Container as a Service like they offer in Bluemix. However, this does not mean you cannot request a virtual server and get Docker running yourself.

If docker is not started issue the following command and check the status again

$ sudo service docker start

$ sudo service docker status

The Docker installation creates a local private network on the virtual server instance. This means by default you won't be able to access your containers unless you expose the particular port. I found a couple different ways to do this. One using the Dockerfile (EXPOSE) as well as deploying the container with -p PORT:PORT. There is an example of this further down in this article.

One of the features of Docker is the portability of images. Docker hub and private registries are services that enable the sharing of images. So I went to http://hub.docker.com, clicked on Browse & Search and entered 'ppc64le'. This returned a number of images, so I thought I would download and test.
NOTE: At the time of writing, docker hub does not recognize whether images have been created for x86 or ppc6l4. Therefore, it is recommended to append ppc64le architecture to the name with either _ppc64le or -ppc64le. Multi-architecture container registry is something that is being looked into.

Create and run your own Container Image (Dockerize)So we've seen how an existing container image was pulled from the registry so let's look at how a container image is built. Container images are built using a Dockerfile. More details on Dockerfile can be found here https://docs.docker.com/reference/builder/

NOTE: You may have an issue removing an image if you deployed a container. Even if the container is no longer running, you will get this error. You need to remove the container first OR use -f i.e. $ sudo docker rmi -f

Remove Container

To remove a container, issue the following command

$ sudo docker rm <container id or name>

Push a container image to a Repository

So once I had my mongodb container image, I thought I would try pushing it to Docker hub. However, when I tried to push it, I got a message about buffering to disk and then it failed. This was with version 1.4.1. Interestingly enough, I was able to push images with the prior version of 1.3.0 (but this is pretty old). Instead I created my own local registry to test the push capability. I used the local registry setup instructions documented in Step 3 here https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/d-docker-on-power-linux-platform/

Once my local registry was setup, I was then able to proceed to pushing my image

Leveraging IBM's virtual loaner program (VLP) can help you
experience the new IBM POWER7, the next generation of Power Systems
technology. Starting February 9th, VLP users can reserve POWER7 systems running AIX 6.1 TL4 SP2 or SLES 11. This is a great way to test/port/evaluate/demo your solutions on the all new POWER7 AT NO-CHARGE!

Where else can you get a POWER7 system within 2 hours?? Come try it out and let us know what you think - either by filling out the end of reservation survey, responding to the VLP blog or by contacting our VLP support through e-mail or Live Chat. We'd love to hear from you!

IBM PartnerWorld members can enjoy this easy-to-use, fully
automated and dedicated environment at no charge. The VLP provides a
wide range of operating systems, including AIX, IBM i, Red Hat and SUSE
Linux along with POWER7, POWER6 and POWER5 hardware.

Users on the VLP Web site (www.ibm.com/systems/vlp) can use live
chat or e-mail via "We're here to help" for answers to questions or
help along the way. Visit the site to sign up and reserve a system.

Please join us here for a VLP Live Q&A Chat session, Thursday May 28 at 2:00PM-3:00PM Central US Time. The VLP Team will be there to answer your questions. The Live Chat will be here on the VLP Blog, look for the Chat box that Thursday. Please mark your calendars and come join in the discussion.[Read More]

The IT landscape is evolving rapidly. Today, IT projects are a key part of business performance. IBM POWER7 can help IT deliver services faster, with higher quality and with superior economics. Learn why "Power is performance redefined."

An historic shift is underway of clients migrating from Sun and HP UNIX® systems to IBM Power Systems™. Over the last four and a half years alone, more than 2,600 businesses have migrated their competitive UNIX systems to Power. With the introduction of POWER7®, that pace has accelerated with over 500 clients migrating in just the 1st half of 2010. In addition, more clients are realizing the benefits of consolidating workloads that have been running on x86 servers onto Power Systems. http://ibm.co/hNgIUN

Workload partitions (WPARs)
are virtualized operating
system environments within a single instance of the AIX® operating
system. WPARs secure
and isolate the environment for the processes and signals that are
used by enterprise applications.

Applications running in an AIX 5.2WPAR use AIX 5.2 commands and
libraries.
If you have applications that have not been certified on newer versions
of AIX, the AIX 5.2
commands and libraries
provides a way to run them in an AIX 5.2
environment on top
of AIX 7.1. Such
a setup allows running those applications on currently available
hardware
that might not support the use of AIX 5.2 as the
base operating
system. The AIX 5.2WPARs
are also referred
to as versioned WPARs. A versioned WPAR is always a system WPAR,
and is not shared.
Versioned WPARs own writable /opt and /usr file
systems.

Quick how to:

To Create a versioned WPAR on the VLP, make an AIX 7 Open Beta Reservation on Power 7.

After the reservation is active, from the My Reservations page, select that reservation.

IBM Virtual Loaner Program Was Cloud before the Cloud

With all the attention on cloud computing these days—including the
recent architectural metaphors for private cloud solutions—you might be
surprised to learn that IBM has been a cloud services provider since
2004. Through IBM’s Virtual Loaner Program (VLP), IBM’s PartnerWorld
members can get access to IBM i, AIX, and Linux on POWER, running their
very own instance with virtually total control.

Would you like to have one-to-one technical assistance from IBM? The IBM Innovation Centers can help. This video gives an overview of the IBM Innovation Centers and how they can help you grow your business.

Use our worldwide centers to help grow your business locally and globally. Training and one-to-one technical assistance to build and test your solutions. Linkage to IBM's sales support for sales opportunity assistance. Collaboration opportunities with IBM, other Business Partners, IT professionals and academia.

Use the VLP to validate your applications as Ready for IBM Power Systems Software. Find out more about this validation program then utilize the VLP to test:

AIX 6 Live Application Mobility allows you to move a running workload partition from one logical partition to another, on the same or different servers. Because this is an AIX-based technology it will work on any Power System that AIX 6 supports.Follow the VLP LAM user guide to get started.

AIX 6 Workload Partitions (WPARs) allows the partitioning of AIX 6 into multiple environments, each hosting applications and providing isolation from applications executing in the other environments.VLP AIX 6.1 systems automatically come with a WPAR. This will soon change and users will have the option to create a WPAR from the Reservation management screen.More details about this process change will be available once it is available. Until then user can test with WPARs on any AIX 6.1 reservation.

PowerVM Live Partition Mobility allows you to migrate running AIX partitions and their hosted applications from one physical server* to another without disrupting infrastructure services. The migration transfers the entire partition state, including processor context, memory, attached virtual devices, and connected users. Follow the VLP LPM user guide to get started.

PowerVM Lx86 brings new benefits to customers and application providers who want the reliability and flexibility of Power Systems in their Linux environment yet use applications that have not yet been ported to the platform. IBM PowerVM Lx86 allows most Linux x86 binaries to run unchanged on POWER systems using translation software that translates x86. Enroll in the PowerVM Lx86 program to start testing the VLP.

Micropartitioning - if you are already developing your application using the VLP, your validation for micropartitioning is complete! The VLP environment utilizes Power micropartitioning to create user LPARs.

IBM Watson passed its first test on Jeopardy! in February 2011, but the real test will be in applying the underlying systems, data management and analytics technology in business and across different industries. http://bit.ly/hWjaWw

Moderated by Stephen Baker, author of Final Jeopardy: Man vs Machine and the Quest to Know Everything, and featuring a panel of IBM business and research executives, this webcast will delve into the present and future business implications of the DeepQA technology behind Watson. http://bit.ly/hWjaWw

Please join us here for another VLP Live! Q&A Chat session, Thursday, July 9 at 10:00am Central US Time. The VLP Team will be here again to answer your questions. Please mark your calendars and come join in the discussion. The VLP team is looking forward to the Live Chat session and hope to have a good turnout from our users!

The IBM Industry Application Platform (IAP) pre-configured stack on the Virtual Loaner Program is now available with AIX 7.1 in addition to AIX 6.1 and AIX 5.3 systems. We have also updated the software components and user guide.

The IBM Industry Application Platform is a pre-configured instance of IBM WebSphere Application Server, IBM DB2 and WebSphere MQ that is available for your IBM AIX 7.1, AIX 6.1 and AIX 5.3 operating- system images on the IBM Virtual Loaner Program (VLP). You can use VLP to develop, test and validate applications by using these products. After reserving your VLP partition, which includes choosing the hardware configuration and operating system, install the IBM Industry Application Platform on that partition. This is a great way to reduce middleware setup time for ISVs!

For details on how to use the IAP on VLP, see the user guide - www.ibm.com/partnerworld/wps/static/pdf/IBM_Industry_Application_Platform_VLP_Guide_v1.pdf

THE VLP IS MOVING!The Virtual Loaner Program website and systems will be unavailable from 12:01AM CDT (GMT-06:00) on Friday, July 13, 2007 through 12:01 AM CDT (GMT-06:00) on Tuesday, July 17, 2007 as we move all VLP systems to a new Data Center. Please plan your work accordingly. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience this extended outage may cause, but it is necessary as we continue to grow the VLP. We do not anticipate any major issues during the move -- all VLP systems will simply be shutdown, moved to the new location, and then restarted. Any active reservations that span the move period will be active and available again on Tuesday. If your reservation is scheduled to end during the outage period, it will be removed during the outage. We recommend that you save or backup any critical information on your active VLP reserved systems to a non-VLP repository prior to the move. If you have any concerns or questions, please contact us using the "VLP Support" tab on your reservation page at---> www.ibm.com/systems/vlp

Thank you for your continued interest, usage, and support of the VLP.[Read More]

Please join us here for a VLP Live Q&A Chat session, Thursday May 28 at 2:00PM-3:00PM Central US Time. The VLP Team will be there to answer your questions. Please mark your calendars and come join in the discussion.The VLP team is looking forward to the Live Chat session and hope to have a good turnout from our users!

We want to keep the discussions general to benefit everyone attending and not dive into issues relating to a particular system/application. If you have a specific question or issue with your VLP reservation please submit those to the VLP support team by going to the VLP support tab.

Examples of topics for the Live Chat include: connectivity/performance, security, VLP usage models, save and restore, using the Software Access Catalog, managing reservations, new virtualization features, etc. These are just examples which do not cover everything - please feel free join us and ask questions. We want to provide useful information for our users and gain your input so we can continue to provide a valuable offering in the VLP.VLP Live! Q&A

I'm Bob Welgan, and I'm a developer/designer on VLP. I'm very interested in your questions and feedback about how VLP works. I'll try to post regularly about changes we are making to VLP. One of the things we are working on right now is to better represent the convergence of IBM servers into simply POWER5 and POWER6-based systems. Also, we are excited about our recent deployment of IBM i on POWER6 servers. Stay tuned to this blog for more information about that part of the offering.[Read More]

PartnerWorld provides how to setup for an evaluation of POWER7 technologies for RHEL 5.5 installed on your VLP system. By upgrading the Linux
kernel, and adding a handful of updated tools, the operating system can
easily exploit the POWER7 system.

New and enhanced offerings from IBM deliver the right solutions
to help you succeed in this increasingly complex and interconnected
world. Whether your organization is just beginning your journey towards
a dynamic infrastructure, or ready to do more, IBM's new offerings are
an ideal step in the right direction towards maximizing your business
and IT investments.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for using the IBM Virtual Loaner Program during the last six months. You may have noticed a few changes during this time. Late last year the maximum memory allowed for a reservation changed from 4GB to 6GB, and then on March 18th, the disk allocation was upgraded so that AIX and Linux systems now have a 35GB base disk, instead of the previous 20GB allocation. The VLP will continue to make additional changes this year as we transition to the IBM Cloud provisioning infrastructure.

As part of the ongoing changes to the VLP, on May 31, 2011, we will discontinue providing the current 10GB shared user space currently mounted as your user /home/u000xxx directory. While we know some users utilize this space, most users do not. The significant increase in the base disk allocation should mitigate the removal of this space. If you currently have data stored in this mounted space, you will need to make a reservation (or use a reservation you created after March 18th, with the larger disk) and move the information currently in /home/u000xxxx to another place on the base disk. Then "save" your reservation. In the past, the 10GB space was automatically saved, but after April 30 it will no longer exist, and you will be required to request a save of your reservation, if you want your information to persist. If you need the information in this space on multiple reservations, you will need to copy it to the base disk in each system, as the automatic sharing will also no longer be provided.

Any reservation created after May 31, 2011 will not have this space mounted or available. Reservation created prior to April 30, will still have access to the space mounted until the end of that reservation, Restores of previous reservations will NOT have the space mounted.

If you have any questions or need assistance with this migration before May 31, 2011, please feel free to request support thru our web site, either via our e-mail support, or our interactive Live Chat function.

We want to make you aware of some new features and enhancements to our Linux systems within the IBM Virtual Loaner Program (www.ibm.com/systems/vlp).

Whether you actively develop on Linux or are new to the platform we believe these updates are worth noting. Remember that the VLP is a no charge offering for IBM PartnerWorld Members so come try it out!

SLES11 is now available! You can make SLES11 reservations on both POWER5 and POWER6 servers.Version updates have been applied to RHEL4, RHEL5 and SLES10New versions and updates also applied to PowerVM Lx86 images. PowerVM Lx86 supports the installation and running of most 32-bit x86 Linux applications on IBM Power Systems models. If you have never worked are new to Lx86 find out how to get started.

Additional information about VLP Linux systems:

All images use the default package selection as chosen by Redhat or SuSE. Gives the user flexibility to customize the operating system to their needs.

By using this methodology, all Linux images, including the PowerVM i386 environments, are configured to use their built in package management utilities. The FTP hosted package repositories are the actual ISO's used while building the images. The utilities are: SLES10... yast2 or rug (rug is a real pain to use, I'd suggest using yast2) SLES11... yast2 or zypper (zypper is a huge improvement over rug, but yast2 is still easier to use) RHEL4... up2date (up2date isn't nearly as flexible as yum, but it gets the job done) RHEL5... yum

Time synchronization with our internal NTP server. (This is very important for development as time skew can disrupt a compiler)All images use the 'noop' disk I/O scheduler. (This increases disk performance and reduces system load by handing the responsibility over to the VIO server)The latest OS supported version of XL C/C++ is always a clean install for every reservation.Apply PTF's which are found in /stage/middleware/Dynamic LPAR and Live Partition Mobility functionality are enabled for RHEL5, SLES10, and SLES11. Reference the VLP LPM User Guide to find out how to get started testing with Live Partition Mobility.

Regards,Virtual Loaner Program AdministrationFollow us on twitter @ibmvlphttp://www.ibm.com/systems/vlp[Read More]

New: Remote access for simplified solution porting and development on IBM PowerLinux.

The IBM Virtual Loaner Program (VLP) now offers ISVs a set of pre-installed tools, including the Advance Toolchain, the IBM PowerLinux Software Development Kit (SDK) as well as a C++ Compiler for easier solution porting to and development on IBM Power Systems servers running Linux.

The Advance Toolchain provides development products specifically tailored to make use of IBM hardware features.

Complementing the Advance Toolchain, the IBM Linux SDK is a an integrated development environment (IDE) that integrates C/C++ source development with the Advance Toolchain, post-link optimization, and classic Linux performance analysis tools, including OProfile and Valgrind.

This no-cost access to the latest IBM Power Systems hardware, development tools and IBM middleware helps ISVs save time and resources, enabling them to move their solutions off competitive platforms and develop their solutions on IBM Systems more quickly and successfully. To find out more, go to the VLP .

The IBM Data Engine for NoSQL - Power Systems Edition creates a new tier of memory by attaching up to 57 Terabytes of auxiliary flash memory to the processor without the latency issues of traditional I/O storage. This system is configured with software in a development EMULATION mode, and does not contain real CAPI Flash accelerators. It is intended as a development platform and is suitable for software development, unit testing, and code integration tasks.

- /opt/ibm/capikv - Software installation on this system, which includes example code, sample applications, headers, and shared libraries, compiled in a development "FILE MODE."

To get started with key-value layer APIs (libarkdb) pass a NULL "file" string to ark_create(...). The database will automatically allocate key/value pairs in system RAM instead of flash.

To get started with block-layer APIs (libcflsh_block) create a temporary block file on the local file system (this is for development purposes only, e.g. "fallocate -l 2G ~/blockfile"), then pass that file path to cblk_open(...). The block APIs will read / write data to this test file instead of a real flash accelerator.

Once software is ready for testing on real systems, dynamically or statically-link to production CAPI Flash shared libraries which are available on the system with real accelerators, or available on IBM FixCentral (search for the EJ16 feature code).

April 24, 2013
Today the VLP is announcing support for IBM's latest Power Hardware using the POWER7+ processor. Standard reservations can now be processed on systems using the new POWER7+ processor.

In addition, several OS images have been updated to the latest OS support levels. Currently provided OSs and releases for the POWER7+ systems are AIX 7.1 TL2SP2, RHEL 6.4 and SUSE 11 SP2. Images saved from these OS releases are supported on previous hardware levels as well, however system images saved prior to this announce will not restore on the POWER7+ systems.

POWER8 is the first processor designed for Big Data, Analytics and Cloud.

There are plenty of reasons why Power Systems are the top choice of clients for scalable systems and the market place data proves it. IBM is the 8-socket and above revenue leader, according to IDC, and used by 10 of the top 10 banks, 10 of the top 10 telcos, 8 of the top 10 Insurers, and 8 of the top 10 retailers. When you add in the bold, unprecedented OpenPOWER initiative, the path for even greater collaborative innovation is unlimited.

Want to hear more? Attend a Linux on Power workshop at one of the worldwide IBM Innovation Center where industry experts will talk about the competitive advantage of IBM Power Systems.

Come hear the latest announcements and news on the OpenPower Foundation and IBM Power Systems.

IBM Power Systems Scale-up and Scale-out Offerings including the addition of the E850 and up to 192 cores and 16TB memory in the E880 and new Operating System support.

IBM Power Systems Cloud Offerings including Docker on Power support in Ubuntu 15.04, the new Cloud Manager with OpenStack 4.3 Kilo release and a preview of POWER8 in SoftLayer which GAs in 2Q

IBM Power Systems Big Data & Analytics Solutions including Power Systems Solution Editions for SAP HANA (Up to 40 cores and 2TB of memory) and hear about perfect linear scaling of IBM DB2 with BLU Acceleration up to 192 cores

Still skeptical? Try it to believe it. Bring your Linux code and try it on systems provided by the Power Development Platform (PDP) Cloud and the IBM Innovation Centers (IICs). At the end of this workshop, you'll be able to access a POWER8 virtual server anytime and anywhere to develop, test, tune, proof of concept or demonstrate your application. Get hands on with a pre-built LAMP or WebSphere/DB2 stack. Check out the capability of Docker on Power!

The Virtual Loaner Program now offers ISVs the ability to instantly connect to VLP support staff using the Live Help Chat function. This feature is a great addition to the existing email based support and will help users get answers to their questions or problems related to VLP.

VLP Live Chat is accessible from all VLP pages once users log on with their PartnerWorld Id. Our staff will be available 17x5 (2AM CDT to 7PM CDT, M-F) and support English only at this point. The page UI is updated automatically to reflect the Chat as unavailable during off hours in which case users can submit their question through the VLP support tab just as before.

In addition, this Chat client is connected to the Virtual Innovation Center (VIC) support team so users can receive platform (HW/SW) support from the same Chat client.

As a reminder, the VLP team provides support for issues related to VLP such as creating a system reservation, connecting to the system, or any program related questions. The VIC team provides technical support for IBM platforms such as installing IBM Middleware or configuring an OS. When initiating a Chat from any VLP page, the user can select VLP or VIC support (with examples to help decide). And the VLP and VIC teams can pass Chat sessions back and forth in case the user needs to be redirected

Active Memory Expansion is an innovative POWER7 technology that allows the effective maximum memory capacity to be up to 100% larger than the true physical memory maximum for AIX 6.1 partitions.

Active Memory Expansion relies on compression of in-memory data to increase the amount of data that can be placed into memory and thus expand the effective memory capacity of a POWER7 system. The in-memory data compression is managed by the system, and this compression is transparent to applications and users.

Active Memory Expansion is configurable on a per-logical partition (LPAR) basis. Thus, Active Memory Expansion can be selectively enabled for one or more LPAR's on a system.

When Active Memory Expansion is enabled for a LPAR, the operating system will compress a portion of the LPAR's memory and leave the remaining portion of memory uncompressed. This results in memory effectively being broken up into two pools - a compressed pool and an uncompressed pool. The operating system will dynamically vary the amount of memory that is compressed based on the workload and the configuration of the LPAR.

Because Active Memory Expansion relies on memory compression, some additional CPU utilization will be consumed when Active Memory Expansion is in-use. The amount of additional CPU utilization needed for Active Memory Expansion will vary based on the workload and the level of memory expansion being used.

Please be advised that a planned outage is scheduled for the IBM Virtual Loaner Program website and reserved systems on Wednesday, April 21, 2010, from Noon CST until 6 pm CST. We will be upgrading the hosting environments for these systems as we prepare for exciting new offerings associated with the General Availability of the products and updates announce on April 13th, 2010. Please be aware that the reserved systems will be restarted during this process, and make appropriate plans. A normal system shutdown will be attempted first on all systems, but if that does not shut down a system, then a force power off will be used to shut down the system. The systems will be restarted after the upgrades are complete. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Regards,Virtual Loaner Program Administrationhttp://www.ibm.com/systems/vlpFollow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ibmvlp

The AIX 7 Open Beta is now available on the Virtual Loaner Program.When creating a new reservation select the AIX 7 Open Beta.http://www.ibm.com/systems/vlp

Welcome to the open beta for IBM’s premier UNIX operating system, AIX 7.
AIX 7 is binary compatible with previous releases of AIX including AIX
6, 5.3, 5.2 and 5.1. AIX 7 extends the leadership features of AIX to
include exciting new capabilities for vertical scalability,
virtualization and manageability.

The open beta for AIX 7 is intended to give our clients, independent
software vendors and business partners the opportunity to gain early
experience with this new release of AIX prior to general availability.
This open beta can be run on any Power Systems, IBM System p or eServer
pSeries system that is based on POWER4, PPC970, POWER5, POWER6, or
POWER7 processors.

-- During the AIX 6 Open Beta trial, the System Workload Partitions (WPARs) are not automatically enabled. The automatic WPAR creation feature will be only available later this year when AIX 6 will be released officially.

AIX 6 open beta -- IBM is offering access to a prerelease version of AIX 6 during the no-charge open beta. AIX 6 provides support for the advanced features of the new IBM POWER6 systems and will include significant new capabilities for virtualization, security, continuous availability features and manageability. AIX 6 is fully binary compatible with AIX 5L. For more information on AIX 6 and the open beta program see: AIX6 Open Beta - Early Programs

Now IBM Business Partners can try the AIX 6 open beta preinstalled and ready to use in VLP. With this beta offering, you will receive easy, no-cost access to an AIX 6 image to develop, test or demonstrate your solutions.

This new technical resource for the IBM i community contains a wealth of information across major topics such as New to IBM i, Technical Library with new articles weekly, Forums and Community, Technology Updates, Tools and Downloads, Services and Events. http://ibm.co/eXrLh9

The IBM Virtual Loaner Program new offering - IBM i 7.1 early program. Try out the latest IBM i now!

Details about the VLP IBM i 7.1 Early Program- VLP will offer i 7.1 Beta level code on POWER6, and Beta level i 7.1 will also be available on POWER7 after April 23rd.- Reservations can be made for up to 21 days duration, 2 CPU / 4 GB RAM / 100 GB of Storage- VLP will offer new beta images until a GA level image is available, approximately 30 days after GA of IBM i 7.1- Once the GA image is available, no NEW Beta images will be allowed, but saved Beta images can be restored for 30 days to allow information to be moved from the image to a GA level image.- A beta image cannot be upgraded to a GA level image.- VLP will dispose of all IBM i 7.1 Beta saved images 30 days after GA level images are available in the VLP.- After the 30 day post GA availability period, the beta promo code will be removed to prevent restore of saved images

A new whitepaper, titled IBM Systems Director: Platform Management Backbone and Baseline for Integrated Service Management from IT industry analyst Jeff Cotrupe of Stratecast (a division of Frost & Sullivan) is now available for sellers and IBM Business Partners to download. Find out how IBM Systems Director is the backbone of IBM's Integrated Services Management portfolio, and helps companies achieve their goals of improving responsiveness, service, managing risk, while reducing costs and complexity. http://ibm.co/ekpWBe

Use Promo code 35678 when making a reservation with the IBM Virtual Loaner Program and receive an extra week for your engagement. Instead of the normal two week engagement you will get three weeks. You can always save your reservations and come back again, but this allows more time to get those important projects completed. Just a little something extra from your place for Power systems, AIX, Linux and IBM i. And of course all of this is for no charge. World-wide remote access to the resources you need!

In VLP, there are two ways of backing up your reserved partition. You can save the state of the system immediately (save now) and you can save the state of the system automatically when the reservation ends (save on exit). In both cases, behind the scenes the VLP automation makes mksysb backups of AIX partitions, tarballs of Linux partitions, and backup images of IBM i reservations. I'm very fuzzy on IBM i things, so forgive/correct me if I got the IBM i-specific name for operating system backups wrong. We call operating system backups images in VLP. Once you've saved an image and your reservation that you used to save the image has ended, you can create a new reservation using that saved image. You can view your saved images by looking at the 'Images' tab in the VLP web application.

Now, I just told you how image saving/restoring is supposed to work. Please leave a comment with your image saving/restoring experiences. I'd like to know your opinions of how this works for you, how useful it is, and about any errors you have encountered.

Membership in the IBM Academic Initiative is the best way to ensure that you have the latest technology and tools to use in your curricula and research, while supporting the culture of open standards throughout the industry.

Who can join? Faculty members and researcher professionals at accredited institutions of learning, all over the globe. Membership is granted on an individual faculty basis. There is no limit on the number of faculty members from an institution that can join.

What does it cost? Your only "cost" to join is the time it takes you fill out the registration forms and get approved. After that, the majority of our offerings are available to you at no-charge. This includes the ability to download all the available IBM technology and courseware, remote access to certain hardware systems, participation in technical webcasts, electronic delivery of our newsletter, and much more.

Why bother to join? Members get access to a wider range of assets, are eligible for additional discounts and assistance, and build collaborative partnerships with IBM and other institutions in the open source community. With the possibility of leadership in your field, prestige for your school, and highly employable students....what's not to like?

There was a catastrophic failure at the electric power substation which supplies power to the data center housing the IBM Virtual Loaner Program, the morning of 24-Feb. The VLP data center has a fully functional and frequently tested backup electrical power system which includes diesel generators. However, the erratic nature of the failure at the substation resulted in the loss of part of the backup configuration. As such, the entire remote access computing environment was shutdown in an abrupt but organized fashion rather than expose the equipment to a shutdown caused by the sudden and total loss of electric power.

Most of you experienced an outage from about 0930 CT to about 1900 CT. With a few exceptions, the VLP is again fully functional. If you are still having trouble, please contact VLP Support via the Support tab on our website or Live Chat so we can help you resolve the issue.

The VLP team, Dallas sincerely regrets the inconvenience caused by this failure. The events and associated logs will be carefully reviewed and appropriate preventative measures will be implemented.

In this case what you really have is two paths to a single disk. If you partition the second disk /dev/sdb, you will wipe out /dev/sda. This will destroy the root filesystem, a bad thing to do.

As VLP has evolved, we have improved the infrastructure to make it more reliable, but those changes did not keep in synch with the operating systems that we host. So, multipath IO is not enabled in some operating systems. The best course of action in VLP in general is to use the system but do not attempt to alter hardware configuration of the system that you have reserved. We give each user access to root with the understanding that users will use root carefully. But, in this case, even careful Linux root users could get themselves into trouble without this warning about multipath IO.

Users are now able to reserve LPARs on JS22 Power6 blade hardware for development. If you prefer to develop on the blade hardware or simply want to test/validate your solution simply select the POWER Blade JS22 hardware architecture when filling out the resource reservation.

Learn more about IBM Bladecenters and Power blades:http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/migratetoibm/systems/power/

On April 7, IBM announced how we will further our enterprise cloud computing leadership with the announcement of new capabilities and proof points based on these thousands of engagements around the world. The announcement includes the new IBM BladeCenter Foundation for Cloud - http://ibm.co/fOPNIX

The world is changing. A new reality is emerging for organizations of every size from every part of the planet. It’s called the cloud—a profound evolution of IT with revolutionary implications for business and society, creating new possibilities and enabling more efficient, flexible and collaborative computing models.IBM is helping clients excel in cloud computing, providing secure and reliable Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (Paas) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) solutions http://ibm.co/fOPNIX

The
IBM Virtual Loaner Program now offers the IBM® Industry Application
Platform (IAP) pre-configured stack on AIX 6.1 and AIX 5.3 systems. The
IBM® Industry Application Platform is a pre-configured instance of IBM WebSphere® Application Server, IBM DB2® and WebSphere MQ.
For details on how to use the IAP, check out the
that is available for your IBM AIX® 6.1 and AIX 5.3 operating- system
images on the IBM Virtual Loaner Program (VLP). You can use VLP to
develop, test and validate applications by using these products. After
reserving your VLP partition, which includes choosing the hardware
configuration and operating system, install the IBM Industry Application
Platform on that partition.For details on how to use the IAP, check out the “IBM Industry Application Platform VLP guide”